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Shrimp Tank Owners Warning

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Wanted to give a warning based on my experience

So I feed my RCS 2 small veggie/catfish sticks a day. It seemed everyday the food was disappearing and everyone was happy

Well I've been noticing a few shrimp deaths and overall not great activity in the tank, then I noticed the spot where I fed them was starting to turn white. So during my most recent pwc I deciding to try to vac up the mis colored substrate... well to my dismay I starting finding a layer of black rotting "stuff", it ended up being the diameter of a baseball....

And man did it smell bad in the bucket. I vac'd it all out and purchased a small glass ashtray from a local salvation army store ($1).

Moral of the story, with shrimp, use a feeding dish. I got lucky that i caught it and didn't lose the entire tank

I hadn't heard of it either, but got it fixed, also changed out the HOB's on the tank with two sponge filters from my other 10g tanks, the prefilters kept getting clogged up so would reduce the flow too much. All 3 tanks are much happier now

what it seemed like was the sticks would be broken apart by the shrimp eating, but then pieces would settle down into the substrate, about 1/2" below it, and there a layer formed that was rotting

I probably removed about an 1" deep worth of substrate that had begun to stick together. I figured get it all out. The glass dish is a big improvement since I can see, wow... they really didn't eat all of those 2 sticks, next time i'll just give them 1

what it seemed like was the sticks would be broken apart by the shrimp eating, but then pieces would settle down into the substrate, about 1/2" below it, and there a layer formed that was rotting

I probably removed about an 1" deep worth of substrate that had begun to stick together. I figured get it all out. The glass dish is a big improvement since I can see, wow... they really didn't eat all of those 2 sticks, next time i'll just give them 1

Oh, I see...it's a wonder that mess didn't affect your water parameters

10 Gallon Beginner Tank... Journal
40 Gallon Breeder: ... Journal
29 Gallon: ... Journal“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went” - Will Rogers

Great information. I don't have a shrimp tank but may get some rcs so I'll be sure to be careful.

My RCS only get an occasional algae wafer crumb (what the snails leave behind) or maybe a bit of sinking Hikari fish wafer...other than that, they seem to thrive on bits of algae they scrape from the deco and substrate, and that's it

10 Gallon Beginner Tank... Journal
40 Gallon Breeder: ... Journal
29 Gallon: ... Journal“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went” - Will Rogers

Glad you found it before all went wrong Hardy. I used to vacuum my 10 gallon shrimp tank weekly (the second go round), and I too noticed the shrimp do not eat as much as you think they do. The first time around I had all kinds of parasites evolving in the substrate which got out of hand. The second time was a pleasure.
That 10 gallon is now being used for cycling live rock, the shrimp were moved into my sons tetra tank about 2 months ago and they are doing really well. They graze on the java moss during the day without worries.